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We weren't entirely sure what to expect in Washington DC, we had somehow managed to time our trip to co-incide with the government shut down! Being a very governemental city there wasn't a lot open.. unfortunately - but we knew we were going to make the most of it! 

One of the open attractions was the Spy museum, it was awesome! As it was one of the only open attractions it was very  busy and full of kids but it was still fun to realize that spy's are actually real!! 

The city was pretty empty and we didn't really know what to do so we went on one of the multi stop double deck bus tours thorugh the city. We figured it would take us to the main attractions and give us some further information on each of them  - even if we couldn't go inside.

The tour itself was great - we saw the whole city. The Tour guides kept telling us about the sweet museums and attractions within the smithsonite buildings and others and ten added, but that's closed due to the shut down..

So weird... We had fun while we were there and although there were some things we werent able to see we made the most of the time we had and saw what we could! 

Ottawa

The nations capital.. Once again we had no idea what to expect in ottawa but as the nations capital we were kind of expecting Canberra! However, we were impressed with the beautiful city and wish we were able to spend a little longer!

After checking into our eery hostel which was built in the old city jail (more on that later) we explored the near by markets, had yet another good coffee and then headed to the Canadian mint, home to the design and production house of collectors coins and bullion. We took a tour of the mint and learns about how the coins were designed and made which was pretty cool! The mint had also produced all the medals for the 2010 Olympics and Paralympics and there was a $1 million dollar coin (whose current value was about $6M!) the mint had only made 5 of these coins, 2 belonged to anonymous collectors, one was in a museum somewhere, one in the mint and one to a very rich sheik in the UAE who apparently used the coin as his coffee table!! 

After our tour of the mint and holding a gold bar (which is actually a lot heavier than expected!) we wandered back to the hostel along the water side and found a beautiful view of parliament hill, the parliament buildings and the lock. We could see across the river to Quebec but in comparison to the beautiful views of ottawa, the industrial buildings and view across Quebec were more than unappealing! 

The hostel ran daily tours of the jail where we were treated to an insite of the very inhumane way the previous tenants of the old building had been treated. There were multiple '(private') hangings, little food and a lot of little nooks and crannies where prisoners were sent (for hours to months on end) to be further punished.

After the jail tour we did something a little more enlightening and went to visit parliament hill and the beautiful parliament buildings of the capital. We took a tour through the building and visited to (sitting rooms?), foyers, the tower look out and beautiful double story library. We learned that a fire during the war with America had burned all the buildings to the ground but the library, which had been saved by a quick thinking senator who shut the big iron doors and stopped the fire entering the building. 

For something different we went to a comedy show on our last night which was quite funny and a great  way to end a good few days in ottawa!

Chicago

Wow, the bus ride to Chicago from Toronto was epic to say the least! We left toronto at 630pmand arrived in chicAgo aT 5am the next day!! Tmake the ride even more fun, there was a stop at 10pm where luckily half the bus evacuated, a stop at 1130pm for the all time favourite border crossing, one at 130am in the quite scary town of Detroit, a feeding ago at 3am (where at least 80% of the bus bought burgers and giant sodas) ! Needless to say we were glad to arrive in Chicago where we zombied our way along the street to the hostel!

A it was 6am we weren't able to check in yet but somehow managed to convince the guy at the front desk to let us have a shower!! Feeling slightly more human after a 30mibute shower we filled up on coffee and then hit the streets to explore and shop!! We navigated our ways through the streets and managed to find what we were looking for, victoria secrets and the Nike store! We had much success shopping and were so glad to be able to check into our hostel room where we crashed and woke up ready for another day! 

We joined the city walking tour from the hostel and walked throu soe of the city sites. W saw a lot of museums, some pretry cool pedestristan bridges and fountains and got some inside on the giant sky scrapers that lines chigaos city scape. Some of the buildings were so beautiful and very old and mix with the more modern buildings from today the sky line was very impressive!

After the tour we headed up to the navy pier which we had been told was a major tourist attraction in the city. The walk from the hostel was very long but our new shoes made it slightly more bareable! The pier  pretty cool. There were lots f restaurants and bars, a children's museum, lots of touristy boat tours, a stain glass window exhibit and a theatre! There was even a few theme park rides! We wandered around for a while, had a Very strong margarita in celebration of teddy a birthday and then quickly ran home in an attempt to avoid the threatening storm that seemed to be following us! 

That night we went to the buddy guy jazz bar and listened to some acoustic jazz before exploring the city by night and checking out the lights on the fountains we had visited during the day.

The next day held for us a lot for sunshine and luckily so as we were headed to watch our very first NHL game! We had gone for a run that morning and noticed people walking to the game at like 8am! Kick off wasn't until 12 midday. There was also a carpark full of RV's who had camped ut for the game and were all starting their day with a pre game BBQ! Definitely some dedicated fans.

We walked to the game with the other 100,000 or so fans heading there. It was crazy! I left home without my hat so of course had to buy one when we got there! What a better way to support my new team.. 

 The game itself was a different experience, we didn't really understand what was going on all the time but it was great to be there and be part of the atmosphere with so many very dedicated fans all donned in their teams colours. Ad the stadium was packed too, not like the suncorp games we were used to where the stadium is never full! 

We spent our last afternoon in Chicago watching the sun set with a cocktail in our hand from the top of the John Hancock centre, one of the tallest buildings in the city. It  was then back home to pack and prepare ourselves for our next stop - New York City baby!! 

 

Toronto

The weather one our arrival into Toronto wasn't favourable but luckily it picked up ver the few days we were there so we were able to explore the largest Canadian city!

Through the hostel, we secured ourselves 'discovery passes' which included a day trip to niagra falls, a 2hr city bus tour, a brewery tour and bike rental! With not long to spend in the city and no idea where to start looking we figured this was ur best option to ensure we saw as much as possible in the small amout of time we had

The day we arrived we checked out the hockey hall of fame and learned about the history of the NHL and ice hockey in general (but I should probably just call it hockey as apparently only the tourists call it ice hockey!!) we saw the Stanley cup and a bunch of other trophies and even though we don't know all that much about hockey it was still a pretty fun afternoon!

The next day we did the bus tour around the city which was great, the bus took us throughthe city, past all the attractions and included a very enthusiastic tour guide! She was great, told us all about the history of the city and all the buildings. The weather wasn't the best but we managed to stay dry on the bus tour and then headed into the underground shopping malls to dry off after the tour!

Luckily the weather cleared up for our trip to niagra falls! The bus, which was packed full of Asian tourists and oldies, picked us up from the hostel and took us straight to the falls. Our tour guide Alex, who really liked the sound of his own voice and was super enthusiastic, talked us through the history of Canada and kept side tracking himself on the 1.5hour bus ride to the falls!

We ventured to the Canadian falls but had full view of the falls on the American side as well. Essentially, they had 'drawn' a line straight through the middle of the river and half was Canadian and half American. 

Our first stop at the falls was for photos and the second was for a trip on the maid of the mist, the boat that takes you out to the falls themselves. It was so touristy but we lined up, got our bright blue plastic ponchos and joined the queues. 

On board the boat we jumped straight to the top and tried to get to the front. Touristy as it was it was still pretty impressive sitting at the base of the falls listening to all the water crashing to the bottom. There was also a lot of spray and we all got very wet, Rhys more so than the others as be had failed to put his poncho on properly! Typical !! After our ride, we found out that the company, maid of the mist will no longer be running the tours to the falls and will stop at the end of October, to be taken over by a different company for the first time since 1845!!

We stopped for lunch on a very Vegas inspired street while we waited for the bus to pick us up and take us to our next destination, niagra on the lake. It was a very cute little lake side town which reminded us very much of montville in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, QLD.  We wandered the shops and had the best iced coffee ever as we sat down by the lake, looking across to New York City! On the way back to the city we stopped at a winery and tried some ice wine which is oh so super sweet. Ice wine, which is a type of desert wine; the grapes are picked when frozen and the wine made while the grapes are still super cooled.  Canada is the largest producer of the wine and according to regulations the grapes must be picked when they are at least -8degrees outside!! I can't imagine anything worse than picking grapes when it's that cold outside!

On arrival back in Toronto we headed straight to the nearest pub in order to catch the first NHL game of the season. We picked a good pub which had multiple gianormous screens and was packed full of 'leafs' fans. (The Toronto maple leafs were playing the montreal Canadiens) 

We filled the rest of our toronto stay with a very quick bike ride (riding in the city street sucks!!) a visit to Kensington markets (very hip), a walk along the waterfront and a trip to the steam whistle brewery. 

The tour through the brewery itself was really interesting as neither of us had ever really seen brewing beer! We were also given lots of samples of beer, so many so that I caved in and tried it.. Can't say I loved it but I can still say I drank beer!!

We also took a visit down to the 'brewery district' which was an old area which had been developed and was full of cute little galleries, cafes and some yummy restuarnts! We started with chilli chocolate mochas, had some delicious traditional Mexican for lunch and cocktails and finished with coconut and dark chocolate sorbet! It was a great end to our time in Toronto and prepared ourselves for the epic journey to Chicago! 

Bon jour Montreal

I didn't know what to expect in Montreal. With the minimal planning we had done on each city we were kind of winging it all! Nevertheless we arrived in the early morning, after a sleepless and very uncomfortable 4.5 hour red eye flight! We navigated our way in public transport to our hostel where we crashed, filled up on coffee and breakfast and then hit the streets to explore!

Montreal is in Quebec which is a very French-Canadian province. It kind of felt like we were in Europe sometimes with everyone speaking French, big wide clean streets and lots of beautiful old architecture! 

We spent a day exploring the beautiful cobblestone streets of Old Town and the many churches and historians buildings found down there! The Notre Dam church was pretty cool and had some beautiful stained glass windows, sculptures and a huge organ with 7000 pipes! (This of course led to you tube searches of organs and learning how to play them ... Which we still do not fully understand!) we also wandered down to the old port where we were sad to find all the coffee shops were closed! Our frown was turned upside down when we found a cute little hip coffee shop for lunch where we had some amazing salad and the best coffees we had had in a long time!  Then it was off to the pub for an afternoon beverage while we watched the sun go down, rested our legs and planned our next day - the bike ride!

There were a few things on the outskirts of town we wanted to check out and knew the easiest way to cram them in was on peddle power! About half an hour into our ride though Rhys got a flat and luckily we had spare tubes in our cute little bum bags on the front of our bikes and had the knowledge on how to change them so we didn't had to call and wait for the 'emergency bus' from the bike rental place to come help us! It was a little tougher than we would have liked but got ourselves back on the road..with slightly dirty hands! Our first stop on our bike tour was the old Olympic park. Montreal had hosted the Olympics back in 1976 and were a still selling merchandise from the games..

There was a lot of construction going on in the area and although there were some cool buildings and stadiums over there everything was pretty old and worn out .. we weren't keen to pay te $35 to go up the lift to te observatory to look out over city so after cycling around the nearby park and botanic gardens we were back on the road to Mount Royal, a mountain (hill) to the north of the town.

The cycle pathways on the road were really well developed so we didn't have the same fear of riding on te road that we had had in Vancouver! The cycle way was its own separated 2 lane pathway down the side of the road and was separated from the cars by a little concrete barrier. It went sidewalk, bike path, concrete barrier, car parking then car traffic!! Something Brisbane should definately invest in! 

After navigating our way up to the top of Mount Royal the clouds had decided to close in and our view of the city was somewhat limited. It was well worth it though as we were still able to get a pretty good view of the city! We got a bit lost on the way down the mountain as we decided to go a different way down, but after finding our way and turning the map up the right way we found our way down to the canal and the local food markets where we stopped to look at the giant pumpkins on sale already for Halloween! 

We then crossed the water and over to (the islands) where we rode around the formula one race track (with all the pro cyclists on their road bikes), past 'habitat 67' (a block of unusual units designed by a 21 yr old architect for the 67 expo and still sought after real estate), to the biosphere (another structure from the 67 expo which had been turned into an environmental museum) and up to a castle before heading back across the busy bridges to return our bikes! 

We chilled out that afternoon with a wine at a little jazz bar listening to some local live jazz

The next day our feet were sore and our legs needed a rest so we took it easy and visited the architecture museum and the art gallery. There was an awesome exhibition at the gallery by chilhuly who made these really cool pieces with blown glass. It was all so colourful and there were so many different shapes, from flowers to boats, to reeds, mushrooms, octopus and chandeliers! We even saw our first Picasso! 

We were impressed with Montreal, we managed to find decent coffees (something we hadn't been able to do in a long time) and had had fun exploring the older city and marvelling over the architecture! It was even fun speaking a little bit of French! 

Our last hoorah in Vancouver

We left whistler excited for our next adventure, excited to be heading home and happy; knowing we had had a great summer, a real winter and had sucessfully achieved the reason why we came to whistler in the first place; learning to have a life outside of work!

Our first stop was vancouver; we were meeting my aunt j9, uncle Paul and cousin charley and I was really looking forward to catching up with some family.

We went down to van the day before they arrived so we could spend the morning doing the grouse grid; the last hike on our bucket list! The hike was a 3km climb up a lot of stairs an approx 850m elevation gain, up to the heart of Vancouver's ski hill. The grind attracts a lot of keen locals chasing after their daily exercise and there was definately a lot of fit looking people running past us on the track! You aren't allowed to walk down the trail either as it is so steep..or at least they tell you that so you pay the $10 to take the gondola down to the parking lot! Clever marketing!!

Back in Vancouver we caught up with the weary Baxter carpenter travellers who were coming to the end of their epic 3 months world tour! They had spent some time over in Europe and the US and had some pretty incredible stories including seeing part of the America's cup in Sam Fran! ..the part when the kiwis looked like they had a chance of winning!! 

We only had 1 day in Vancouver together so we rented out some bikes and hit the pavement in an attempt to see as much as possible. We rode around the sea wall around Stanley park and had a break in Yale Town for some brunch! Rhys scared us all my misplacing his wallet..only to discover it in one of the many pockets in his backpack! After our refuelling stop we continued over to Granville island and then through the city streets to Gas Town to see the steam clock! Riding through the city streets was a little scary but we made it and then waited about 10 minutes for the clock to go off! After almost 5 hours of solid riding we returned the bikes and headed back to the hotel to relax and recover! 

 

We had decided on Japanese that night so in the recommendation of the hotel concierge headed to an all you can eat Korean and Japanese BBQ! I am dangerous at an all you can eat event as I feel I have to get my monies worth and order as much as possible! Unfortunately you have to pay for the extra food if u don't eat it so this usually means stuffing ourselves a little too much! It was pretty damn good though and a good end to a short, but sweet time sort with some family! 

The next day we had the cruisiest of all mornings and saw j9 and co off to the airport where they were headed to Hawaii for a week of paradise! 

We had a few more hours to kill before we had to lug ourselves to the airport so headed over to vancouvers latest attraction; the fly over Canada. A '30 minute ' simulated flight over Canada..it was pretty awesome but broken into 3 sections so I don't feel like the main video went Long enough ! It was still cool to see some other parts of Canada even if they didn't tell us where they were! 

It was then back to the hotel to grab our oversized bags and the rest of our luggage before we headed to the airport, with a lot of staring on the bus and train, enroute to our next stop; Montreal 

In the summer time

Our Whistler summer was short and sweet but by far one of the best summers ever. We spent just short of 3 months trying to cram in as much bike riding, hiking and exploring as possible. The result, was some good photos, unforgettable memories and a few new experiences.

The summer began after we returned back to whistler from our road trip. After picking up our stuff from joe and rose and remembering just how much crap we had, then reuniting ourselves with our bikes, we jumped straight back into work. I was back at salomon and the grocery store and Rhys was working in the golf shop at Nicklaus north golf course, one of the more prestigious courses in the area next to green lake! 

First on our list of things to do when we got back to whistler was heading up the mountain and seeing just how different it looked in the summer time! As it was considered early in the season the first time we headed up, not all the hiking routes we open but we hiked up and down one of the cat tracks, checked out the abandoned t bars and walked past the super huge snow walls, cleared to allow access to the hiking trails. At the top of peak we were met by views across to black tusk and once again reminded of our summer goal, to hike to the top of the peak! 

 

In mid July, Ewan came to visit and we were given the opportunity to pretend live like tourists and do a few of the summer touristy events! Zip lining didn't really take our fancy, especially after seeing the South Park episode outlining just how 'extreme' it was. The boys instead went on a full day white water rafting trip down by squamish and made a pretty good day out of it!

We still had the car so took the opportunity to do a few more hikes around the area. Or first on the list was the Joffre lake, a 3 hour hike past 3 beautiful glacial fed lakes just a few km north of pemberton. The hike itself was fun, with a pretty steep incline and passed over a lot of loose rocks and exposed tree roots. At the end of the hike, Ewan and I braved the cold waters of the first lake, while Rhys watched.. 

We went down to vancouver too the night before Ewan flew out, so he could check out the city and we could drop him at the airport about 6 hours early!! On the way down to van we stopped at 'the chief' in squamish, a mammoth limestone cliff visible from the highway and very popular with rock climbers! We didn't rock climb but instead took the steep, stair filled path with some tricky scrambling sections up to the peak to enjoy the panoramic views across squamish and an impressive vertical drop beneath us.

Down in Vancouver we were lucky to have some good weather, which is very rare for our visits to the city! We did a bit of shopping before heading across to Granville island for a few afternoon margaritas to watch the sun go down! It was a great way to end the jam packed, fun filled 10 days we'd spent with him but sadly meant it was back to the whistler reality!

Back in whistler we were back to work and back ticking things off our whistler summer bucket list!

 We did a fair bit of cross country bike riding, Rhys a little more so than me as I am still learning to get over my fear of going fast! We rented some road bikes and went for a road ride and it felt so good to be back on the road! The only problem was the only place to ride was on the highway with all the cars so the ride wasn't as enjoyable as it could've been! A whistler summer wouldn't have been complete without a trip to the bike park either, so kitted out with his arm and leg pads, full face helmet and super suspension dh bike, Rhys hit the park! (There is a photo of him getting some air over one of the jumps below) I wasn't game enough to do it especially after a little incident I had with a small paved downhill section of the valley trail and a tree.. Or my fear in the Xc park so I was more than happy to sit this one out! 

We also headed up the whistler mountain again to do another hike, this time the high note trail, which took us from peak chair on the top of whistler, around the back of the mountain to harmony and symphony areas where we hiked up to the top of flute bowl (something we had also done in the winter before boarding down the fresh un-groomed powder) and back up to the roundhouse. It was a cool hike and even cooler exploring some of the areas we recognised skiing in the winter! 

There was also a mountain top BBQ during the season, basically an all you can eat BBQ up at the roundhouse overlooking the mountains! Luckily Sunday night was the seafood buffet where they had prawns, BBQ salmon and mussels..otherwise I don't think we would have made it up as I wasn't really interested in the pig on a spit or BBQ lamb.. All in all it was a fun afternoon and pretty tasty food (and ceAsars of course!)

We were lucky Rhys was working at the golf course as it gave us access to free golf on a usually $180/person/round course! We didn't get to play together as much as we would've liked..which was probably good for Rhys as I beat him on our first round which kind of dampened his spirits ;) he then spent a lot of his spare time in the practice facility trying to tune his skills so he could beat me next time we met!! I was disadvantaged with a migraine on the final showdown so I guess well have to wait to battle it out when we get back home!

The end crept up on us very quickly and all of a sudden there were only a few weeks left of our amazing summer. It was then that we realised there were still a few hikes on our bucket list we had to do before we headed off! The first was the short, but challenging wedgemount and of course the main player; black tusk. 

We had planned to do the tusk with a few people from work but woke on the morning to lots of cloud and rain..needless to say that day was then ruined and we spent the day kind of moping around wishing we were hiking! Luckily the next weekend was a little nicer so we set off to do wedgemount. The hike was pretty short but very steep and challenging, it was pretty fun climbing and scrambling up and over rocks and tree roots. The clouds had kind of come over when we reached the top so we didn't get the best view at the top but the hike was well worth it in itself! 

Then the day came, black tusk. We woke up to a foggy morning but knew it was going to clear, so we piled ourselves into jimmy for the last time and headed to the trail head. Sadly as we'd had to change our hike date so many times due to the poor weather no one from work was able to get days off, so it was just us! O well, it was what we were used to and it meant we could whinge and yell at each other when one of us started to drop off the pace! 

Arriving at the trail head we realised this was a pretty popular hike! The large carpark was full and it was only 730am on a Sunday! Nevertheless we tied our laces and hit the trail. The first 7kms were through switchbacks and rainforest before we popped out at some meadows. We walked through the meadows for a while before finally gaining site of the tusk! We then started to climb up some pretty steep terrain before we reached the black tusk view point. 14km from the start, this is where most people tend to turn around and where the maintained trail ends. You can see up to the tusk and the beautiful views across the garibaldi lake but the more adventurous continue up the slippery, rocky terrain up to the very top. Obviously we were of the later and started to scramble up the slippery slopes. After a few Km's of near vertical hiking we reached a point where we had to traverse around the base of the tusk itself and up to the chimney where we could then climb to the top! After stumbling around to the base of the chute I nearly freaked out when I saw what was next. A sheer vertical black crumbly wall of rock.. Luckily there were a few people up there with us which was encouring and of course Rhys reminding me that we hadn't come this far to just turn around again! I managed to put my fears aside and commence the climb, making sure with each step that I wasn't putting my fingers of feet onto unstable rocks. The climb up wasn't that bad..until I realised we had to come back down the same way! 

The view at the top though was well worth everything. It was amazing, we could see over to whistler mountain, through the valley and back over the super blue waters of garibaldi lake. 

After taking in the views we commenced our descent, which wasn't as bad as I had imagined! With a bit of encouragement and assistance from Rhys I proudly made it back down to the base of the tusk. The climb back down the rocky mountainside was fun too as we kind of slid our way down the rocks. We stopped via the garibaldi lake on the way down for a much needed swim in the super cold glacial fed waters before successfully making our way back to the car park. Over 30km, 9 hours and gaining almost 1700m of elevation, it was probably the most memorable moments so far! 

We spent lazy afternoons at the 'lake' swimming in the cool waters, throwing the frisby and even testing our skills on the paddle board. I even learnt to slack line, which is kind of like titght rope walking on a slitly thicker rope tied between two trees! The days were longer than we were used to back home due to daylight savings so we were able to fit everything into the day! 

Work wasn't too shabby either, we had a good crew at the salomon store and I am proud to say i got pretty good at pumping up bike tyres, changing tyres and selling shoes!  Toward the end of the summer the numbers in the village started to drop off so it got pret quiet in the store but it was Definitely the cruisiest, but funniest job I've had in a long time! A nice break from the stresses on site!

Rhys's work was a nice change for him too, working in a customer service role for the first time, he got to spend his days greeting the wealthy golfers and meeting all the high rollers from whistler including the general manager of Whistler Blackcomb. There were also some perks with the jobs, getting to dress up in nice Ralph Lauren attire, a uniform which was not complete without the radio headset!

Finally the day came to pile up everything in our little unit in brio and attempt to fit it all in our backpacks before hitting the road for some more adventures! The packing was a bit of a mission and more of our stuff got sent down to the reuse it centre than packed into our bags but we eventually got there! 

We left whistler happy, knowing we had made the most of our summer and ready for the next adventure!